[VA Advogado]

First amendment, extended by the fourteenth, says that a State cannot abridge free speech, religion, etc. . You can't fire a state employee, therefore, for something he/she says away from the workplace, or for his/her religion.

Perhaps you fail to understand the market participant doctrine, that says a state is not bound by those same constrains when it is operating in the marketplace. In this case, in the eyes of the law and that doctrine, it is operating as an 'employer' not a 'state'.

[Right Wing Professor]

You're right, I'm not familiar with it. By all means post a cite, because I'm not familiar with a precedent that says you don't have to respect the Bill of Rights if you're competing with a private entity. (And I don't believe the state should be competing in the marketplace anyway.) But in any case state universities are not operating in the free market.